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General Resources for United States History

  • America's Library
    http://www.americaslibrary.gov/
    This is a website for students created by the Library of Congress. It has information on the states, American history, and amazing Americans. You can also see what happened in history on your birthday.

  • The American Experience
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/
    A weekly TV series by WGBH (Boston) and PBS that airs Monday nights at 9 pm on most PBS stations and features events and people that have shaped America. The website contains supplementary material for each program.

  • American Heritage
    http://www.americanheritage.com/
    This online version of the print magazine offers selected articles from the print version and tables of contents. Check here for interesting articles.

  • American Memory Project - Library of Congress
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/
    A large collection of outstanding online exhibits with original source material organized by topic.

  • American Social Movement Cultures
    a study of social movements in America by the American Studies Program of Washington State University, Pullman, Washington

  • American South
    http://americansouth.org/
    The AmericanSouth.Org project is a collaborative endeavor to improve access to scholarly resources concerning Southern history and culture by making crucial material accessible to all citizens through the creation of a collaborative digital collection of Southern history and culture. Emory University, in collaboration with a group of major research libraries in the Southeast, is setting up the central portal.

  • American Women Through Time
    http://www.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women/wh-timeline.html
    This chronological collection of websites with historical information relating to women. Created by Ken Middleton of Walker Library, Middle Tennessee State University.

  • American Writers.org
    http://americanwriters.org/
    A companion site for C-SPAN's special television series from March through December 2001, AmericanWriters.org looks at the lives and works of selected American writers who have chronicled, reflected upon or influenced the course of US history and explore what their works mean to Americans today.

  • Chatham College: Pittsburgh Teachers Institute
    http://www.chatham.edu/PTI/
    The Pittsburgh Teachers Institute provides online curriculum units, including many in United States history. These often have a Pittsburgh element to them.

  • Chronicling America
    http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/
    This site from the Library of Congress allows you to search and read newspaper pages from 1900-1910 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

  • Common Place
    http://www.common-place.org/
    "The Interactive Journal of Early American Life" has information on 19th century as well. From The American Antiquarian Society.

  • The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA)
    http://chla.library.cornell.edu/
    This library of online full texts includes such works as "History of agriculture in the southern United States to 1860" by Lewis Cecil Gray and Esther Katherine Thompson; and "History of agriculture in the northern United States, 1620-1860" by Percy Wells Bidwell and John Ironside Falconer.

  • David Rumsey Map Collection
    http://www.davidrumsey.com/
    The David Rumsey Map Collection focuses on 18th and 19th century North, and South American cartographic materials. The collection includes atlases, globes, school geographies, maritime charts, and a variety of separate maps including pocket, wall, children's and manuscript maps. The collection was digitized by Cartography Associates.

  • Divining America: Religion and the National Culture
    http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/divam.htm
    Designed by TeacherServe from the National Humanities Center to help high school teachers of American history bring their students to a greater understanding of the role religion has played in the development of the United States.

  • Documenting the American South
    http://docsouth.unc.edu/
    A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century, from the Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The texts come primarily from its Southern holdings and includes 914 books and manuscripts.

  • DOUGLASS: Archives of American Public Address
    http://douglassarchives.org/
    An electronic archive of American oratory and related documents intended to serve general scholarship and courses in American rhetorical history at Northwestern University.

  • eHistory
    http://ehistory.osu.edu/
    Ohio State University's History Department has created this website that includes multimedia Histories, Primary Sources and Reviews. Included are such multimedia histories as "The Strike at Homestead", "Coal Mining in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era," and "Excerpts from The Pittsburgh Survey".

  • Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
    http://www.gilderlehrman.org/
    Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City promotes the study and love of American history. On their website are resources for students and teachers, including primary sources.
    • History Now
      http://www.historynow.org/
      History Now is a quarterly online journal for American history teachers and students, launched in September, 2004. All issues are archived.

  • Historical Maps of the United States
    http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/histus.html
    From the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas.

  • Historical Census Data Browser
    http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/
    The data presented here describe the people and the economy of the US for each state and county from 1790 to 1970. From the University of Virginia Library.

  • History Matters
    http://historymatters.gmu.edu/
    "Designed for high school and college teachers of U.S. History survey courses, this site serves as a gateway to Web resources and offers unique teaching materials, first-person primary documents and threaded discussions on teaching U.S. history." A project of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning of the City University of New York and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

  • The History Net
    http://www.historynet.com/
    This website, by the Weider History Group, the world's largest publisher of history magazines, contains many articles about various periods in American History.

  • Humanities Interactive
    http://www.humanities-interactive.org/
    Within this site are interactive presentations from the Texas Humanities Resource Center about the history of the borders between the US and Mexico and Canada, as well as Texas History and Culture.

  • Making of America
    http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/
    a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction from the University of Michigan and Cornell University

    Multnomah County Libraries Homework Center: Wars and World History
    http://www.multcolib.org/homework/warwldhc.html
    An extensive collection of links concerning American History with an emphasis on its Wars.

  • National Archives and Records Administration
    http://www.archives.gov/
    "...to ensure ready access to essential evidence...that documents the rights of American citizens, the actions of federal officials, and the national experience..." Offers copies of many historical documents online.
    • The Exhibit Hall
    • Our Documents
      A National Initiative on American History, Civics, and Service presenting 100 milestone documents of American history. It is a cooperative effort among National History Day, The National Archives and Records Administration, USA Freedom Corps, and The Corporation for National and Community Service.

  • National Museum of American History
    http://americanhistory.si.edu/
    This Smithsonian Institution museum in Washington DC offers several online exhibits which will be linked to under the appropriate time period.

  • National Park Service: Cultural Resources: Links to the Past
    http://www.cr.nps.gov/
    Historical and archaeological resources
    • Teaching with Historic Places
      Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) uses properties listed in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places to enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects.

  • National Women's History Project
    http://www.nwhp.org/
    "History looks different when the contributions of women are included."

  • Outline of U.S. History
    http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/histryotln/
    A chronological look at how the United States took shape — from its origins as an obscure set of colonies on the Atlantic coast a little more than 200 years ago into what one political analyst today calls "the first universal nation." This fully illustrated edition has been completely revised and updated by Alonzo L. Hamby, Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio University. Published by the US Department of State. (November 2005)

  • PBS: United States History Programs
    http://www.pbs.org/history/history_united.html
    An index to companion websites to TV documentaries in American History produced by the Public Broadcasting System. Includes these of local interest:

  • PBS: History Detectives
    http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/
    History Detectives is a 10 episode television series, each episode exploring 3 historical mysteries in various regions of the United States.

  • Talking History (SUNY, University at Albany)
    http://www.talkinghistory.org/
    This is an hour-long weekly broadcast/internet radio program that focuses on all aspects of history. You can listen to their archives.

  • The Tax History Project
    http://www.taxhistory.org/
    A website that traces the history of American taxation from Tax Analysts, a non-profit, non-partisan organization fostering open debate on federal, state, and international tax policy.

  • Vincent Voice Library: U.S. Presidents of the 20th Century
    http://www.lib.msu.edu/vincent/presidents/
    from Michigan State University. Listen to the voices of the Presidents from Grover Cleveland to Bill Clinton!

  • West Virginia Division of Culture and History
    http://www.wvculture.org/
    Includes the West Virginia History Journal, a great resource for local research.

  • What's a Dollar Worth?
    by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis easily calculates what an item purchased in a selected year back to 1913 would be worth in the year 2000 dollars. This data is derived from the Consumer Price Index.

  • Winning the Vote: Western New York Suffragists
    http://winningthevote.org/
    A website by the Rochester Regional Library Council which chronicles the rise of the Women's Suffrage movement in western New York, beginning in 1848.

  • Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775 - 1940
    The Women and Social Movements website is a project of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at the State University of New York at Binghamton, intended to introduce students to a rich collection of primary documents related to women and social movements in the United States between 1775 and 1940. Currently it contains 30 document projects undertaken principally by Binghamton undergraduate and graduate students.